Students from Abingdon and Witney took The Plunge!

Minister for Further Education, Skills and Lifelong Learning John Hayes announced two consultations yesterday.

Minister for Further Education, Skills and Lifelong Learning John Hayes announced two consultations yesterday. Skills for Sustainable Growth outlines BIS’s vision for skills and explores some key areas where we would like to seek further views and A Simplified Further Education and Skills Funding System and Methodology which seeks views on simplifying the funding system.

Employers, individuals, colleges, training organisations and representative organisations are asked to share their ideas on how they would like skills policy to be set out in the future.

Consultation opened on 22 July 2010 and responses will be received until 14 October 2010.

Youth unemployment is costing the economy £10m a day in lost productivity, so the need to give students work and employability skills training is greater than ever.

The Guardian reported this month that an ‘aspect of the worrying trend in youth unemployment is that there are thousands of young people who don’t have the skills, confidence or qualifications to find their first job.  They may have struggled at school or grown up thinking no one cared, and they are being driven further from the job market, as they struggle to compete with a backlog of graduates.’

So it’s clear that we need to tackle this entrenched youth unemployment now and that educators and employers must work together to give these disadvantaged young people the long-term support they need to escape unemployment for good.  1 million youth unemployed makes for a frightening headline.

One way colleges are responding is to offer the Work and Employability Skills qualifications this coming academic year to give their students an edge in the job market.

At Working Knowledge we partner with FE colleges nationally to deliver work, employability, enterprise and life skills on your behalf.  We do all the planning delivery and portfolio collection for you.

We deliver the qualifications by running events that are exciting, challenging and fun.  The events involve local and regional employers that we recruit on your behalf and who, in many cases, go on to offer students work placements, guest lectures and apprenticeships.

Students not only feel more confident about their career goals after our events, thanks to a large extent to the engagement with local business people, but also feel more motivated to complete their core programme.

Our partner colleges fund our programmes that last from 1-3 days either through the qualifications that we deliver on your behalf (including all portfolio collection) or through project funds such as Aimhigher.

Take a look below at what local employers and students thought about recent Working Knowledge events held in Bristol;

If this is of interest to you, then please email  james.lott@twkg.net for more information.

Business Secretary Vince Cable sets out new priorities including Apprenticeships, NEETs and Adult Learning

John Hayes, Minister of State for Further Education, Skills and Lifelong Learning, announces new freedoms for colleges

Launch of the European Skills for Employability Awards

Launch of the European Skills for Employability Awards by the European Alliance on Skills for Employability

Have you created or implemented an initiative that has used ICT training or digital technology skills development to raise employment prospects and improve digital and social inclusion? If so, you should enter the European Skills for Employability Awards, a development of the Skills for Employability Laboratory facilitated by CSR Europe and Econet. Read more here

Cameron Herold: Let’s raise kids to be entrepreneurs

At a recent TED event (Canada) Cameron Herold makes the case for parenting and education that helps would-be entrepreneurs flourish — as kids and as adults.

An entrepreneur since childhood, Cameron Herold wants parents and teachers to recognize — and foster — entrepreneurial talent in children. Bored in school, failing classes, at odds with peers: “This child might be an entrepreneur”.

Achieve your student numbers and protect your SLN with a Short Course this summer.

If you have not quite reached your student number then delivering a short course this summer could protect your SLN. The problem that you might face however might be organising such a course for the numbers you need this late in the academic year.

We are running one day events for a number of our partner colleges this July to deliver for them WWO L1 in a single day. Each event accommodates up to 120 students and for one college we are running the event twice in order to guarantee the numbers they need.

We still have capacity to deliver three more events in July. For more on this story go here

Expanding FE Employability and Enterprise Skills Provision

Working Knowledge has entered the Barclays “Take One Small Step” business competition (https://www.takeonesmallsetep.co.uk/Entry/View/2474) which is a national business competition with regional prizes of £50k in cash.  £50,000 would enable us to build capacity to deliver events to 5,000 more students and 1,000 employers this year and then enable those colleges to continue to provide the same every year thereafter.  Read more here

Language skills improves employability says new survey

A survey by specialist language recruiter, Euro London Appointments has revealed that language skills improve employability. Euro London surveyed 228 employers of whom 86% felt that languages were an important skill set.

Read more here